tweets like do you agree that drag story hour should be mandated for elementary school students, and why does it seem like most republicans are pedophiles? the account had 130,000 followers. the top tweet viewed 27 million times. twitter took down the account a few weeks ago. it was a fake, but the photos were not. now cnn exclusively shares the real face that s on the notorious account. are you erica marsh. no. reporter: why are you talking to us? i want to tell the world that s not me. my name is not erica marsh. i am courtney. reporter: she lives in a rural part of the tampa bay area. she showed cnn her original photos nearly a decade old, she says stolen from her facebook
page by whoever or whatever is behind this account named erica marsh. the photos on the account are from when courtney was still a teenager. she s since gotten married and had children. let me have you read erica marsh s most popular tweet that got over 27 million views and then tell me what you think. today s supreme court decision is a direct attack on black people. no black person will be able to succeed in a merit-based system. reporter: what do you think? i m speechless. reporter: speechless because while this viral fake account shares courtney s face, they do not share the same politics. are you liberal? no ma am. no. reporter: are you republican? yes, ma am. reporter: can you ask you which way you voted in the last presidential elections? of course i voted for trump. reporter: you sense the irony here, right? yes. reporter: some people thought this was an ai-generated image. yeah.
Transcripts for CNN CNN Newsroom With Fredricka Whitfield 20240604 16:28:15 archive.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from archive.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
reporter: a professor at clemson studied disinformation and trolling. what is erica marsh? is it a parody, a troll, a disinformation campaign? erica marsh is a fake online influencer. she isn t a troll in the way that a lot of viewers may think of a troll. reporter: he believes this was the work of a professional. this is not an amateur, no. it would be very hard for an amateur to get to well over 100,000 followers in such a short amount of time. reporter: courtney s pictures plucked on purpose. she looks all american, she looks friendly. ultimately it s about influence, meant to engage with a specific audience. reporter: whether the goal of the account was to generate money or sow division, the real owner is likely still operating on the platform. is there anyway to tell who s responsible for erica marsh or where they come from? that s the million dollar
Erica Marsh quickly rose to fame earlier this year as a viral left-wing voice on social media. Her incendiary tweets, often ultra-liberal and hyper-political, drew millions of views and the ire of conservatives, who pointed to her outlandish comments comparing Republicans to pedophiles and conservative Supreme Court justices to Nazis as examples of extreme liberalism run amok.